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Earlier this month, I shared with you a quote from Arnoud Balhuizen, chief commercial officer of BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in the world. In a September interview with Reuters, Balhuizen called 2017 the “revolution year [for electric vehicles], and copper is the metal of the future.”

Balhuizen’s assessment couldn’t be more accurate, and the implications for investors is too compelling to ignore.

In the third quarter, global sales of electric vehicles (EVs) soared 63 percent compared to the same period last year, 23 percent compared to the second quarter. A total of 287,000 units were reportedly sold in the September quarter, leading Bloomberg New Energy Finance to project total annual sales to exceed 1 million units for the first time.

As the world’s largest auto market, China was responsible for about half of the sales as the crackdown on polluting industries has propelled renewable alternatives from power generation to consumer products.